Established NY Tech Companies 'Demo' At June Meetup

CNET's The Social | NYConvergence

Last night's NY Tech Meetup, held on the first day of NYC's Internet Week, represented a break from tradition.  Instead of startups being given five minutes to demo and possibly be heckled by a crowd of 400, Meetup.com founder and CEO Scott Heiferman invited eight established companies to present and instructed attendees in an e-mail to "grill 'em".

Here's a summary of the presentations:

• Kevin Ryan, co-founder and chairman of AlleyCorp, the parent company of Silicon Alley Insider and other city Internet businesses, highlighted some of those businesses recent successes, including a Billboard cover of artist Ingrid Michaelson and the adoption of the 10gen platform.  He closed with a list of Internet companies here with over $10 million in annual revenue and an estimate of all city Internet businesses' worth at $35 billion.
• Catherine Levene of DailyCandy presented an overview of the woman-focused Web site to a largely male audience she expected to be unfamiliar with it.  Levene talked about the size of the company, now with eleven daily editions as well as travel- and kid-focused e-newsletters.  She added that they're looking to a future beyond e-mail, but she provided no specifics.
• Rob Kalin of Brooklyn-based Etsy.com focused on Etsy's successes since its founding 2.5 years ago when he collected startup money by speaking with local Brooklyn businesses.  Between 15,000 and 20,000 items are on sale each day and he has no plans to scale the company to the size of eBay as he's more interested in offering consumers a more "playful" way to shop.  Heiferman mentioned that a Wal-Mart board member had joined the Etsy board during the Q&A, but Kalin didn't go into details.
• CEO Betsy Morgan and co-founder Jonah Peretti of The Huffington Post emphasized that the blog doesn't only produce original content, but it's a news curator, a model first employed by Matt Drudge.  They see themselves as a hybrid, relying on a Peretti-designed user interface (UI) to track article readership in real time, but they leave editorial decisions to humans and not algorithms like Google News.
• TheLadders' founder and CEO Mark Cenedella also touted the human-powered element of his $100K+ job search Web site, showing a photo of employees screening jobs and job applicants at workstations with multiple monitors conducting editorial review of clicks on job postings and resumes.  When asked about whether or not they'll have to change their advertising tagline in a few years, Cenedella said that he doesn't expect $100K to be the average salary for another 20 to 30 years.
• Meetup.com's CTO and general product manager took the stage to rattle off a list of changes at Meetup.com, a Web site redesign, a venue search function, payment options from Amazon, an Italian-language version, a public API, ticketing with bar codes, and the opportunity for groups to find local sponsors for events.
• David Uyttendaele, CTO of Mimeo, a custom print and ship Web site, spoke about the company's growth (they now have 550 employees), their ability to ship easily thanks to their printing location's proximity to FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee, and the launch of Mimeo Marketplace for the selling of materials.
• The last to present was Chris Phenner, vice president of business development at mobile content marketplace Thumbplay.  Showcasing Nielsen numbers that displayed Thumbplay's dominance in the mobile ringtone space, he added that the Web site now offers 80,000 ringtones, videos, games, and graphics for download for a $10 monthly fee.  Phenner also expects Apple to allow independent producers like Thumbplay the ability to offer content for sale on the new iPhone, pending Apple approval.